Reard's
suit was a refinement of the work of Jacques
Heim who, two months earlier, had introduced the "Atome" (named for its size)
and advertised it as the world's "smallest bathing suit". Reard split the "atome"
even smaller, but could not find a model who would dare to wear his design. He
ended up hiring Micheline
Bernardini, a nudedancer from the Casino
de Paris, as his model.

In
recent years, the term monokini has come into use
for topless bathing
by women: where the bikini has two parts, the monokini is the lower part. Where
monokinis are in use, the word bikini may jokingly refer to a two-piece
outfit consisting of a monokini and a sun hat. The term was coined by Rudi Gernreich.

The
tankini is a swimsuit combining a tank top and a bikini bottom.
A string bikini is a more
revealing alternative style where both top and bottom are reduced to triangles
of cloth connected by strings.

The
lower part of the bikini was further reduced in size in the 1980s to the Brazilian
thong, where
the back of the suit is so thin that it disappears into the buttocks. Recently
bikinis have been getting smaller. This trend started with the top piece, but
after shrinking the top so much that it barely covers the nipples, swimsuit manufacturers
have moved on to reducing the size of the bottom piece. One can see the trend
toward reduction in the following styles: slingshot, mini, teardrop, minimini,
micro, and, what could be called a double g-string, the minimicro.

In
addition, a variant of the bikini popular in fantasy literature
is a bikini that is made up of metal to serve as (admittedly rather impractical)
armor (Sometimes referred
to as a Chainmail Bikini). The character
Red Sonja
is a famous example.